The Internet, and the flexibility it provides, has led to new ways of communication. One significant use of the Internet is used for searching for information from websites where information is posted. To aid people in finding information across a vast number of websites, search engines have been developed. In addition to finding web pages that match user-specified search queries, search engines rank search results in a way intended to surface information that is most useful to the user. One approach to ranking web pages is called PageRank.
The PageRank algorithm is premised on the assumption that web pages to which many other web pages link are valuable. In practice, PageRanks for web pages are determined using a “crawler.” A crawler is an automated tool that randomly picks a web page and follows links from that web page to other web pages. As the crawler follows links from page to page, it records the frequency with which it visits a web page as an indication of the PageRank for that page.
Though, it has been recognized that a link to a web page may not necessarily signify that the web page to which a link points is valuable. A first web page may link to a second web page to criticize the second web page or otherwise in a negative fashion. Accordingly, some coding techniques for web pages support coding of links to other web pages as negative links. The crawler may ignore these negative links so that they do not influence the PageRank.
In addition to allowing users to find information available from publicly available web pages, the Internet is used to facilitate feedback from a broad base of individuals. One way broad-based feedback is obtained is through the use of collaborative ranking systems. There are many websites that provide recommendations on restaurants, travel sites, computer games, music and a wide array of other topics. Such sites receive and aggregate user input on a topic and then present that information as a recommendation.
A further use of the Internet is to facilitate interactions broadly called “social networking.” In a social network, a group of individuals that agree in some way to be linked can communicate, frequently by posting information on a website to which access is restricted to members of the social network. Examples of such social networking applications are FACEBOOK and LINKEDIN. Through such systems, users can make connections and express their likes or dislikes.